Modesty is a virtue that can never thrive in public.
We should begin by setting conscience free. When all men of all religions shall enjoy equal liberty, property, and an equal chance for honors and power we may expect that improvements will be made in the human character and the state of society.
I request that they may be considered in confidence, until the members of Congress are fully possessed of their contents, and shall have had opportunity to deliberate on the consequences of their publication; after which time, I submit them to your wisdom.
Had I been chosen President again, I am certain I could not have lived another year.
I would define liberty to be a power to do as we would be done by. The definition of liberty to be the power of doing whatever the law permits, meaning the civil laws, does not seem satisfactory.
Did you ever see a portrait of a great man without perceiving strong traits of pain and anxiety?
I must study war and politics so that my children shall be free to study commerce, agriculture and other practicalities, so that their children can study painting, poetry and other fine things.
Individuals have conquered themselves. Nations and large bodies of men, never.
The divinity of Jesus is made a convenient cover for absurdity.
I didn’t grow up imagining myself as an opera composer. Only once in my entire adolescence did I attend an opera. I went and saw Aida at the old Met, didn’t understand a thing about it, and thought it was pretty awful. But I think I had it in my genes without even realising it.
There is something very unnatural and odious in a government a thousand leagues off. A whole government of our own choice, managed by persons whom we love, revere, and can confide in, has charms in it for which men will fight.
Neither my father or mother, grandfather or grandmother, great grandfather or great grandmother, nor any other relation that I know of, or care a farthing for, has been in England these one hundred and fifty years; so that you see I have not one drop of blood in my veins but what is American.
The world grows more enlightened. Knowledge is more equally diffused.
Borrowed eloquence, if it contains as good stuff, is as good as own eloquence.
When I was young, and addicted to reading, I had heard about dancing on the points of metaphysical needles; but, by mixing in the world, I found the points of political needles finer and sharper than the metaphysical ones.
In days of yore, the poet’s pen From wing of bird was plunder’d, Perhaps of goose, but now and then, From Jove’s own eagle sunder’d. But now, metallic pens disclose Alone the poet’s numbers; In iron inspiration glows, Or with the poet slumbers.
The numbers of men in all ages have preferred ease, slumber, and good cheer to liberty, when they have been in competition.
There is not an enemy so stout, as to storm and take the fortress of the mind, Unless its infirmity turn traitor, and Fear unbar the gates.
It is folly to anticipate evils, and madness to create imaginary ones.
I do not say that democracy has been more pernicious on the whole, and in the long run, than monarchy or aristocracy. Democracy has never been and never can be so durable as aristocracy or monarchy; but while it lasts, it is more bloody than either.